PV003: The Grand Adventure

Continuing where we left off with the Iguazú episode of last week, here’s the first one of those park vignettes I told you about.

While we were contemplating what to do on our second day in the park, a Ukrainian cab driver named Andres recommended a tour called La Gran Aventura. We’d seen brochures and advertisements all over, translated into English as The Big Adventure, The Great Adventure, or The Grand Adventure (It’s probably the worst actual translation, but I liked “grand” because it sounded the most poetic.)

The cost of the tour was 150 pesos per person, about $50 U.S. We were worried about spending so much for what was really just a slightly different view of the park, but it became one of the highlights of this part of the trip. I think the post-trip DVD they sell for 90 pesos ($30 U.S.) was kind of a rip-off, but it turned out to be invaluable when we told sat down to tell our story here… The following is a transcript of the above video for Google’s benefit (ignore it, watch the video instead!)

Let’s call this a… Postcard Valet Temporary Intro

La Gran AventuraLa Gran Aventura
November 2008

Also on the second day, we decided to spend the extra money to do the grand adventure tour which starts out with what they call a nature ride through the jungle.

We had to take a little truck-type vehicle with seats on top of it.

They take you down to the river’s edge and you get put on a large speedboat. They’ll take you out on the water, up to the waterfalls themselves.

You get to the waterfall and the boat, literally, goes so close that you are inside that waterfall. You get soaked from head to toe, there’s like no dry spot on you at all.

We had started out on that trip in a bad mood.

There was a chain of events that happened.

Oksana almost didn’t get on the boat because she had to go and get her clothes changed.

I missed the part where there’s a little bathroom where you can go and change your clothes and change into your swimsuit. And I’m running down the stairs, people are like, “well you can’t go, it’s a certain number of people that can get into the boat.” And I’m trying to explain to them that my husband is in one of those boats and we’re together, so there’s a seat for me in that boat.

(Just come on! No, no…¡mi esposa allá!)

(They’re not letting me go!)

I get there, finally, get into the boat, to find out that Arlo had a very bad experience, too. Because he was holding his camera, video camera, and his dry sack…

And when she handed me all her stuff, I was switching things from one hand to the other, and ended up dropping my digital camera. And it fell on concrete stairs and it rolled down three of them before I was able to stop it.

So I get onto the boat and I’m all annoyed and he’s all annoyed and we’re both just sitting there going “grrrrr” at each other, but going down to the waterfall was awesome and we kind of got over us being “grrrr.”

When they plunged us under the spray, they had a video camera on us and you can see that we just were giggling like school kids because it was just completely ridiculous and hilarious.

This is an amazing little travel video. There are several unique elements, but the most incredible part is that there is so much third party footage of what happened. It’s also impressive that something went wrong and there is enough video footage to display what happened. My instinct when things go wrong is to shut the video camera off and deal with the problem. It also breaks up the impulse to have everyone smiling on travel videos. Oksana’s expression when she thinks she won’t be able to go on the trip is very candid. My only question is, how did the dropped digital camera come out?

Rest assured, the camera came through (relatively) unscathed. A few scuffs and scratches on the body, but as far as I can tell, nothing that affects its photos. Pretty surprising, actually. It’s the second time this camera and lens has taken a fall without so much as knocking the focus out of alignment (i.e., here.)

If you look again at the section where Oksana is pleading with the guy holding her back, you can tell where I had to edit around some missing footage. I didn’t actually turn the camera off when I starting yelling at them to let her through, but I did ignore it completely. All I have for that is a shaky shot of my feet.

Also, there may not be as much “third party” footage as you suspect; I count only 4 scenes (Stepping on the boat, sitting apart on the boat, getting splashed, and going under the waterfall.) Of course, I used many tricks to make it look like more: Spread those videos out, used footage we took of other boats making the same trip, etc. Oksana and I shoot a lot on vacation, but when editing, I always wish it were more!

Welcome to Postcard Valet

Postcard Valet is a travel blog and video podcast by Arlo and Oksana Midgett. They just returned to Juneau, Alaska, after almost three full years of travel and living abroad. Many of their stories, photos, and videos have yet to be shared...